A former student asked me recently, “B., what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?” It wasn’t something that I’d been considering at the time, but after a few moments, here’s what I came up with:
In the spring of 1963 – my freshman year in college – Count Basie and his band came to Montclair State College. I was supposed to meet Charley Blakely, a fellow freshman from North Bergen, and I did, but he was about ten minutes late and when we entered the large gym where the basketball games were played, it was about 8:15 and the place was jammed.
They had the bleachers on both sides down but there didn’t seem to be a space anywhere. Directly across from us (we were standing inside the lobby doors), against the back wall, Count Basie and the band were already putting the jazz into the New Jersey air.
“It doesn’t look like there’s a seat left. Whaddaya wanna do?” Charley asked me. “Shit, I don’t know,” I probably replied. “How come no one’s sitting on the floor?” he said. “You know they don’t want anyone to walk on that floor with shoes on,” I said. “But we’re both wearin’ tennis shoes,” Charley answered. (This was long before today’s hundred-dollar, glorified sneakers; you either wore black-and-white high-tops or white “tennis” shoes, even if you never picked up a racket.) “You wanna go sit in front of the band?” I suggested, without thinking much about it. “Yeah,” Charley said…and we started walking across the darkened gymnasium floor, knowing that every eye in the stands was probably watching us.
“If The Count looks at us like we’re a couple ‘o dickheads, I’m gonna die,” Charley whispered, voicing my exact thoughts.
Anyway, we got to the out-of-bounds or base line, right under where the basket and backboard had been raised, and we sat down, like in the lotus position. The band was still blasting away, and off to the right, behind his piano, sat Count Basie, dressed in some kind of nautical outfit with a blue blazer and a white captain’s hat. As I watched, he looked up from ‘tinkling the ivories,’ did that thing with his hand, like he was shooting a pistol, then gave us a nod and a wink, and went back to playing the piano.
Within a minute, the entire stands had emptied out and there were about five thousand other MSC students sitting on the floor behind us. We stayed there the entire concert, unwilling to lose our “seats.”
When the band had played the last encore, I found a sheet of red poster board that had been stapled to a bulletin board on the back wall and tore a piece off and went over to ask The Count for his autograph. He took a pen out of his blazer pocket and signed the piece of red cardboard and then, with a smile, kind of whispered, “Pretty gutsy move you boys made tonight. I was ‘fraid they’d come drag you off the floor. I woulda told them to leave ya alone. You like jazz?”
After I stammered out some kind of “yes,” I shook his hand – he had rings on three fingers – and left.
That autograph is still in my wife’s hope chest – don’t ask me why. I guess that was the “coolest” thing I’ve ever done…unless someone reminds me of something “cooler.”
